Hunted: A Suspense Collection

by J. L. Drake

  The officer standing before me did not look a day over twenty. I struggled not to let out a laugh. He had sandy blond hair and a thin, similarly colored mustache. He had an athletic build and a golden, shimmery tone to his skin. He was beautiful.

  “Why were you running?” he asked, looking down at me gruffly. A man like him could keep you safe, I thought out of the blue.

  “I was scared of you,” I answered honestly.

  “What were you afraid I’d catch you doing?”

  “I was making out with a boy in his truck. He got too grabby and I bailed out. I ran because it’s after curfew and I didn’t want to get in trouble.” It didn’t get much simpler than that.

  “Stand up,” he ordered, pulling me back up to my feet. Holding a small penlight, he flashed its tiny beam from side to side, inspecting my eyes. I stared straight ahead, holding my breath nervously. “Are you high?” he asked, his face close to mine. His breath smelled like spearmint gum, a pleasant combination with the smell of his aftershave. I don’t know why, but I felt the urge to lean forward and kiss him. After kneeing Robbie in the groin for kissing me, this seemed like a strange revelation.

  “Yes. I’m high,” I admitted. He grabbed me by my cuffs and led me toward his cruiser. “Please, don’t do this,” I begged. “I’m a foster kid. If my foster parents find out, they’ll send me back for sure.” Like a child, I tried to shuffle my feet, slowing down the inevitable.

  “I know who you are,” he said, catching me off guard.

  “Huh? How do you know…?”

  “You live two houses down from me. I know your parents, Baylor and Chuck, very well. They babysat me when I was little,” he explained. I looked at him skeptically.

  “How old are you?” I asked hesitantly.

  I expected him to say it was none of my damn business, but surprisingly, he said, “Twenty-two.”

  I couldn’t help it. I smiled and chortled softly.

  “Listen, I’m going to let you go. But if I catch you running the streets at night or doing drugs, I’ll whisk you off to Juvenile Hall without a second thought. Baylor and Chuck are good people for taking you in, and I suggest you treat them with a little more respect,” he said sternly. I nodded agreeably.

  I walked the two blocks to the Raffertons’ house with Officer Milby driving slowly behind me. I couldn’t help it; I liked him. The cruiser moved along at a snail’s pace, but I took my time walking back. I enjoyed knowing he was back there, protecting me. I’m like that egg, tumbling off the roof, seconds away from splatting on the ground below, I realized. A failed science project…but for some unfathomable reason, Officer Milby made me want to straighten out my act. He made me want to kiss a boy again.

  Chapter 15

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. The Raffertons were still dozing soundlessly when I snuck back in, but my mind was filled with thoughts of Officer Milby and the way I’d reacted to Ronnie’s groping session. Would I ever feel safe with a man again? Or would I always feel fearful and unsure about their motives?

  Even though I’d been here nearly two months, I still hadn’t unpacked. My suitcase was in the closet, along with that dreaded boombox. Opening up the case, I lifted out the clothes Jeanna bought for me. Even though they’d been washed nearly fifty times at the children’s home, I still couldn’t get the smell of the house of horrors out of them. They were brand new in the suitcase when Jeanna gave them to me, and I knew the smell had to be long gone. In reality, it was the sight of them that triggered the smell in my mind. A rank mixture of cigarette smoke, damp sweat, and some sort of cleaning agent…I wondered if I’d ever forget that smell.

  Sometimes I would be walking down the hallway at school or moving through an aisle at the store with the Raffertons, and I’d catch a whiff of some boy or man’s cologne, and instantly, I’d be transported back to that room. I shivered at the thought.

  Sometimes, even the tastes of certain foods reminded me of the house of horrors. Like meatloaf, for instance.

  Lying in the bottom of the suitcase was the Ziploc bag containing the set of finger prints I’d lifted from the boom box. I considered the possibility of taking the prints to Officer Milby. But by doing so, I would expose my true identity, and what if they didn’t find Jeanna or her helpers? Then my parents could be killed or someone could come take me away again…

  I wanted to tell somebody. I wanted to tell Officer Milby. I picked up the boombox and set it down on the bed. I had never turned it on; in fact, I’d barely touched the damn thing. My mother had bought it as a gift for Denver Reynolds’ fictitious birthday party. I imagined my mom, pushing her cart through the aisles of Walmart slowly, trying to find a really cool present for me to take to the party. My mother wasn’t perfect, but worked hard at being a parent, and that’s all any kid could ask for. I missed her terribly. Neither she nor my father deserved what I was putting them through. All those foster kids without parents, and mine were just a bus ride away. It seemed so cruel, knowing they were out there, yet I couldn’t go to them.

  I imagined them at home, sitting in the living room of our split-level ranch, their feet kicked up in the recliners. My dad always watched the news while Mom read the latest cheesy romance novel. I was always trying to get her to read one of my mystery or horror paperbacks, but she’d just wave me away, declaring that if it wasn’t happy or sweet she didn’t want to read it. “When you have your own kids someday, you won’t want to read that scary crap. Being frightened is no longer fun when there are real-life fears that scare you every day,” she’d tell me. For the first time, I got it. After what happened to me, I found no amusement in reading thrillers anymore either.

  God, I missed them. Were their day-to-day routines the same? Or had my absence impacted everything in their daily lives? I wasn’t sure which hurt worse, the thought of them sitting around crying over me, or the thought of them moving on with their lives.

  CDs were lined up on metal racks in the Raffertons’ living room. I browsed through the titles, looking for something that sounded familiar. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers—now that was a band I recognized. When I was young, my dad went through a guitar playing phase. Too nervous to play in front of people, he would test-drive his quiet tunes on me. I guess he figured his little girl wouldn’t be too critical. No matter how sharp or flat the notes were, I danced and clapped along jovially. My favorite song he played for me was “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Even now, I could still see his slender, tanned fingers picking at the steel strings of his acoustic guitar as he sung the lyrics to the song softly, hesitantly. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the memories to fade away, but they clung on anyway.

  Someday, I hoped to get back to them, but I had to prepare for the worst—which was the possibility of living with the Raffertons for the rest of my life.

  Would it really be so bad? I wondered. Baylor did want me, after all. It was nice to know there was someone out there who wanted me for reasons that weren’t ill-intentioned.

  I ran my fingers along the rows of their CDs. I considered snatching one to take with me to my room. Then I changed my mind and went back to the boombox, peering at it apprehensively. There was a small compartment on the top of the box for inserting CDs. With a push on its lid, it popped open easily. There was already a CD inside.

  A band called The Doors. I stared at it, almost afraid to touch it. I’d never heard of them, but I was leery of anything coming from Jeanna’s house. I pressed play, and a sick, awful feeling was forming in the pit of my stomach. When the words rang out, I recognized the music immediately. I would know that haunting voice anywhere.

  I skipped through the track until I found the particular song I was looking for. A melancholic voice rang out. Words about the end, and how his only friend was “the end.” I shuddered. I wanted to turn it off, but I sat there, frozen, listening to the song from start to finish. Unsurprisingly, it was called “The End.”

  Why was I torturing myself? Because, deep down, you deserve it, a voice inside my
head rang out. I shook away the thoughts, clamping my hands over my ears, wishing the thoughts away.

  I wondered if the CD was left in there by accident or if it was another form of a cruel joke on Jeanna’s behalf. I was tempted to take it out and smash it on the floor, busting it into tiny little shards. But I kept on listening. Images of that black-filled room and the terror I’d felt as I lay there helplessly filled my mind. I’d been so sure they were going to kill me. They didn’t; they killed my best friend instead, and now I was stuck here, left behind to pick up the pieces and deal with the weight of her loss.

  Eventually, I stood up and turned the player off. Shuffling through my bag, I looked for more tape. I lifted the CD from its tray, thrilled to see two distinct fingerprints on the shiny side of the disc. Bingo! I bagged up the entire CD, careful not to smudge the prints or add any more of my own prints to it. Someday, I’d get her…all of them… “I promise I’ll get them for you, Claire,” I whispered breathlessly.

  I anticipated another nightmare as I drifted off to sleep, but I was pleasantly surprised to have sexy dreams about Officer Milby. It had been a while since I’d dreamt of anything good, and especially anything about a member of the opposite sex. I knew nothing could come of the fantasy, but it didn’t hurt to think about it. It felt good, feeling something besides grief, anger, or numbness for even a brief moment.

  Chapter 16

  I breezed through my sophomore and junior year. Well, I shouldn’t say breezed. The time passed quickly, but I struggled with concentrating, and my grades wavered frequently because of it. I also had trouble getting along with the other girls. They called me things like ‘slut’ and ‘bitch,’ and I returned the favor.

  Robbie Simms never spoke to me again, not after what happened at the ridge, and he told everyone that we had sex. I wanted to spit in his face and stomp on his nuts, but I refrained, determined to do right by the Raffertons, just like Officer Milby had instructed me to.

  After that night on the ridge, I’d learned that Officer Milby’s first name was Jonathan. He did, in fact, live two doors down from the Raffertons. I did everything I could to get his attention, even sunbathing half nude in the backyard. He would wave and gaze at me briefly, but that was the extent of our interactions. I was certain that an upstanding man like Jonathan had to have a wife and kids, or at the very least, a girlfriend. But he lived alone, according to Baylor.

  Baylor and Chuck were nice to me. Eventually, they wanted me to call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad,’ but I just couldn’t do it. My real mom and dad were out there somewhere, and I would never forgive myself, or my kidnappers, for breaking my parents’ hearts.

  Maybe someday I’d try to think of them as my real parents, but for now, I just wasn’t ready. We ate dinner together like a family and watched old movies on the weekends. My life almost seemed normal. Almost.

  All in all, despite some of the difficulties at school, I was doing well. I wasn’t using drugs, and I was keeping to myself mostly. But then something happened outside of my control. In the middle of a Sunday dinner, Baylor announced, out of the blue, that she was pregnant. She proudly displayed a pregnancy test—ironically called Clear Blue just like her announcement—with two light blue lines. Baylor was pregnant, despite her doctor’s earlier diagnosis. The Raffertons were going to have a baby. It was hard for me to wrap my brain around. It was a miracle; it was a tragedy.

  I stared at the tiny pale lines, willing them to just go away. If Chuck and Baylor had a baby, where did that leave me? Where would I fit in their family now? I felt angry and sad. But most of all, I felt alone and unwanted.

  Chapter 17

  Nine months later, Baylor and Chuck brought home a beautiful baby girl. She had chubby, dimpled cheeks. They let me name her Claire. Her eyes were dark, almost black at first, but then they turned a lovely sea blue color, and she had gorgeous blonde hair to top it all off, that curled around the edges of her ears. She slept constantly, barely able to keep her eyes open for more than a half hour at a time. She also ate like crazy, taking bottles almost every two hours. Baylor let me help her and I did sometimes, warming up bottles at feeding time and changing her diaper too.

  Baylor loved baby Claire so much, in a way I just knew she could never love me. It hurt to see her so happy, but I was pleased for her and her husband. I don’t know why, but I started acting out in a variety of ways.

  It all started a few months before baby Claire was born. I didn’t come home after school most days and my grades dropped significantly. I fell in with the wrong crowd, a group of roughneck boys from the other side of town. I let them use my body, and in return, I used their drugs.

  Deep down, I think I was trying to get them to notice me. The boys in town and the Raffertons. But Baylor and Chuck were so caught up in getting the house ready for the baby and attending ultrasound appointments, they barely seemed to notice my change in behavior.

  The Raffertons tolerated everything I did, but not when I brought home the drugs. Two months after the baby was born, Baylor found a small pouch of heroin hidden in my bottom panty drawer. As it turns out, the Raffertons were paying attention after all.

  I’d found a local connection through one of the older boys at school. After doing heroin again for a month solid, I’d gone back to feeling addicted. I stopped wanting it and started needing it to function again. There was that same old feeling creeping up my back, making my skin crawl when I didn’t have it…

  Baylor and Chuck confronted me about the drugs, and I told them the truth. That’s when they sent me back to rehab.

  ***

  I was in rehab for nearly six months, and in truth, I sort of enjoyed the solitude. Besides attending group therapy, I spent most of my time on my own, reading or writing in my room. During that six month period, I read some of the best books of my life, like Lord of the Rings, On the Road, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lolita, and The Great Gatsby. I also started writing short haikus and silly stories. I never wrote anything scary or sad, just meaningless, upbeat tales of love and friendship.

  When the psychiatrist thought I was stable enough to go home, he brought me in his office. “We’re releasing you, Elsie,” he said, looking at me seriously over the top of his glasses.

  “Good. I feel ready. How soon will the Raffertons be here to pick me up?” I asked eagerly. Dr. Gibson took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose nervously.

  “You can’t go back there, Elsie. The Raffertons can’t take the risk of having you there with the new baby. Miss Ally from Saint Mary’s will be here to pick you up in under an hour. You better start packing up your stuff.” I should have been upset, sad, or angry at least, but I felt completely numb. Of all the times I’d wanted Baylor to throw in the towel and give up on me, this time wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 18

  The head mistress picked me up as promised and drove me back to Saint Mary’s. I didn’t say one word to her the whole way there. The familiar stone pillars and the paint-chipped sign greeted me as I arrived. I was going to miss Chuck and Baylor. I was going to miss baby Claire even more. She was still too young to smile, and every day I would tickle her and smile at her brightly, hoping to catch her first one. I wanted to be there the first time she smiled and laughed. I wanted to be the first one to see her walk. Now, I would never get to see that beautiful baby hit any of her major milestones.

  But the reality was that a small part of me felt relieved to be back at Saint Mary’s. After all, it was the place where my life as Elsie McClain first began. As soon as we went in, Miss Ally sat me down in her office and pursed her lips, looking me up and down speculatively.

  “What?” I asked defensively.

  “You’re almost seventeen now, Elsie. You have one year to get your life straightened out so that you can begin your new life as an adult.” I stared at her, considering her words carefully. I’d not even considered the fact that in one year I’d be on my own.

  “You need to finish your education, secure
some type of employment, and save up enough money to put down a security deposit on an apartment. Unless you would prefer to be homeless or in jail,” she challenged, raising her eyebrows at me provokingly.

  I shook my head, staring down at my sneakers guiltily. Miss Ally was kind, but stern, and she always had this way of demanding absolute respect.

  Everything Miss Ally said was true. I had to prepare for adulthood. I didn’t want to live on the streets or wind up in jail. Also, deep down, I knew I had to get my act together because I had to be ready for the moment when Wendi Wise would take her revenge, reentering the world as herself.

  Chapter 19

  That last year at Saint Mary’s, I held it together fairly well. There were a few incidents involving drugs, but for the most part, I stayed on track. I couldn’t have done it without Miss Ally’s guidance and help.

  She helped me complete the requirements for my high school diploma and set me up with a job interview at a local Costco. Surprisingly, they hired me, no questions asked. I had a feeling that Miss Ally either pulled some strings or threatened the manager’s life. I suspected the latter.

  I worked nearly forty hours a week, and Miss Ally held onto every penny I earned. She took me to cash my check each Friday, and she promptly took the money away from me, storing it in her personal safe. It was probably for the best; having that much cash on hand, I was bound to go out and use. About a month before my eighteenth birthday, she took me to the bank and helped me set up my own bank account. It was legit, with a debit card and a fat book of checks. I felt so grown up and proper.